About the project "Portuguese Kids Report Card"

Portugal is currently developing national recommendations
and policies on health-related physical activity, but the
systematic evaluation of the factors that affect physical activity
behaviours in Portuguese youngsters is essential and can be
useful for public health strategies targeting enhancing physical
activity levels.

The Portuguese Report Card followed the inspiration and
procedures used in the Active Healthy Kids Canada. Due to the
need for nation-wide studies in children and adolescents, since
available results are not consistent, and since a robust
surveillance data for Portugal that would address these needs
are still lacking..

These report cards seemed an exceptional opportunity for
presenting the data in a format that can be used by
researchers, policy makers, and practitioners.

The 9 quality indicators are organized into 2 categories

Overall Physical Activity and Health Behaviours and Outcomes

Sedentary Behaviour

Overall Physical Activity Levels

Active Play and Leisure

Active Transport

Organised Sport Participation

Settings and Influences on Physical Activity and Health

Family and Peers

School

Community and the Built Environment

Policy

The Card grades

The card grades are based on an assessment of current
Portuguese data for each indicator, judged against a
benchmark (e.g. an evidence-based recommendation), and
determined by the percentage of Portuguese children and
adolescents meeting the benchmark.

Each grade assignment are described bellow:

80-100%: Portugal is succeding with a large majority of children and adolescents - A

60-79%: Portugal is succeding with well over half of children and adolescents - B

40-59%: Portugal is succeding with about half of children and adolescents - C

20-39%: Portugal is succeding with less than a half of children and adolescents - D

0-19%: Portugal is succeding with very few children and adolescents - E

Common to any report card
are the grades. This
Portuguese Report Card
assigns grades to 9 quality
indicators grouped into 2
categories (see below):

Overall Physical Activity and Health Behaviours and Outcomes

Sedentary Behaviour - 20% of pupils aged 10 to 18 years old revealed to watch TV more than 4 hours per day during weekdays, and 47% during weekends (1) - D

Overall Physical Activity Levels - Only 34% of boys and 17% of girls, aged 11-15 years, were sufficiently active (2). Only 36% of 10 to 11 years old, and 4% of 16 to 17 years old adolescents meet physical activity guidelines (3) - D

Active Play and Leisure - 49% children and adolescent aged 12-18 years regularly participated in physical activities outside of school 14% engaged at least once per week (1) - D

Active Transport- 45% were associated with active transport to and from school (4). Thus walking were identified as the main choice of transportation, 30% of children aged 7 to 8 years old commuted either by foot or cycling on a regular basis during school days (5) - c

Family and Peers - Fathers and mothers have similar influence on children's PA levels, irrespective of their sex (7). Only 9% of adults engaged in vigorous-intensity physical activity on at least 4 days, and 14% of adults reported that they engaged in moderate-intensity on at least 4 days within the past 7 (8)- C

School - PA is provided as physical education classes in almost all schools and academic grades providing participation in schools sport activities for all students (9) - B

Community and the Built Environment - In Portuguese youngsters, perceptions of environment correlates are gender and behaviour (4) - D

Policy- Despite the policies have not created all of the necessary conditions, they did establish an official position that recognizes PA as an important factor in public health and youth development (10, 11) - C

The process used to assign the grades for the health indicators involved

1. The “best available” evidence for each quality indicator.

2. In the first instance surveys that were representative of children in Portugal were
selected. Where nationally representative data were not available the best available survey
data was used.

3. For settings and influences, policy documents, strategy documents and other guidance
that was publicly available was used to inform the expert group. This process involved a
subjective analysis of selected documents between the years 2010 and 2016.

4. For each quality indicator, data were considered against a recommendation or
benchmark.

5. The rationale for using the data source was given and likely biases in the data recorded.

6. Subsequently major gaps in the data were noted and considerations given to limitations
in the “best available evidence.”

7. Recommendations on how to improve the grade or improve measurement were
provided.

8. Every grade was achieved through a verification process involving presentation to the
expert group by the assign members of every grade suggestion and then discussed
according to survey methodology and data quality.